


Flightless within these walls

by mechanonymouse



Category: Original Work
Genre: Case Fic, Didn't Know They Were Dating, F/F, Getting Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-07-25 09:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16195064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/pseuds/mechanonymouse
Summary: Investigating Malcolm Carter's disappearance gives Evelyn a chance to spend time with her friend and sometime colleague Sara.





	Flightless within these walls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [infernal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernal/gifts).



The heat wave that had been suffocating the city for the last month had broken last night, but Evelyn had dressed expecting the sweltering heat would return by mid morning. As a result she was shivering in her silk camisole and linen jacket as the air con blasted a frigid 15℃ against the barely 17℃ outside. She was waiting on her last client for that Friday, her desk already cleared of other case files, which had been collated and processed away by Christie, the Reardon and Sons administrator. The snarky mug declaring “Reardon and Sons, Investigators from the cradle beyond the grave,” which she had drunk a disappointing Cuppa Soup from for lunch, hoping it would warm her up, was washed and put away in the kitchen. Its space was taken up by a plain, neutral beige mug filled with tea the same colour, even though the tea bag had been steeping for half an hour.

The client, when she arrived exactly on time, was blandly average in the way white middle-class women can be. The type of woman who has breezed through life, not distinctive enough to attract attention, but safe and pretty enough that things came easily to her. Even sitting taking notes about her, Evelyn knew she wouldn’t remember her face if she met her again in a different situation. The neat unpatterned sheath dress - well but not perfectly fitted, off the shelf from Debenhams or French Connection - fell just below her knees as she sat, and was dressed down with a complementary cardigan and flat court shoes. Nothing was perfectly matched, but everything worked together. The colours suited the pink undertones of her skin, medium brown hair and eyes, and were this season’s colours, though muted enough not to stand out. The natural makeup was well applied, but the extra thickness around her eyes and nose showed, and didn’t hide that her eyes were puffy and bloodshot.

“I’ve been dating Malcolm for ten years,” she said, twisting the tissue in her hand. “It’s not like him to miss a date and he’s never gone away without telling me.” Her voice broke on the last line, and she looked like she might cry.

Evelyn looked over her shoulder at the empty desk where the agency’s administrator would normally sit. Christie was far better at comforting people than she was, but she’d left early to go to the dentist. “When did you last see Mr-?” She let the name hang.

“Carter. Malcolm Carter.” The client took a deep breath and shoved the mangled tissue into her handbag. “I’m sorry, I’m telling this awfully. My name is Elizabeth Roberts. I last saw Malcolm last Tuesday - we went to a show and then drinks. We both had work the next day, so we went back to our own places. We were planning to go out for a meal on Friday. When Malcolm didn’t show up, I texted him and then went round to his place. I’ve a key to his. It was obvious he wasn’t there.” She lost some of her newly regained composure. “Called the police, the local hospitals, his work…”

“When was the last time he went to work?” Evelyn asked. This didn’t seem like the kind of missing persons case that appeared in front of a private investigator only a week after the person went missing. A professional middle-aged white man, no signs of violence or health issues, just not showing up to planned meeting. This kind of missing person either quietly went silent with no leads or progress over the next few months before the desperate family came to a private investigator, or they became a major man hunt over the first 24 hours with a dead body showing up sometime in the next week. The kind of missing person case that normally came to a private investigator this fast were low risk older teens and young adults, who the police had made clear to the family left of their own accord and didn’t want to be found.

“Thursday. He didn’t call in on Friday. I’m his next of kin. HR at his work reported to the police on Monday when he didn’t call in, quoting the case number I was given on Friday.”

“What’s supernatural about this case?” Reardon and Sons specialised in cases with a supernatural cause or client. It wasn't unusual for missing persons cases where the missing person was from the supernatural community to come to them early. “And if there isn’t anything supernatural, why are you contacting a private investigator already?” Evelyn underlined ‘Police’ on her notepad three times, each bolder than the last.

“The police aren’t doing anything!” She started sobbing now. “Malcolm and I lived apart, and they think that means we weren’t serious. That he just got bored or met another woman and left. Leaving behind a career he adored and had worked hard to rise in the last fifteen years. He would have totalled his professional reputation doing so.” Evelyn wrote down ‘problems at work?’ and nodded sympathetically. Elizabeth Roberts pulled out a business card holder from her purse and slid two cards across the desk. One was for the HR manager at Teaching Excellence, Rachel Dumas, and the second for the managing director, Thomas Scrivens. “Malcolm worked with challenging teenagers to provide access to education and appropriate psychiatric support. Thomas, his boss, recommended Reardon and Sons when he got frustrated with the police.”

“Thank you.” Evelyn clipped them to the paper folder she was collating. “Do you have your case number and the name of the responsible officer?” Elizabeth pulled a piece of paper with a business card attached to it from her handbag which Evelyn returned after taking a copy. Later, Christie would type up Evelyn’s notes and input the names of all the interested parties in to their database, but Evelyn still found it easiest to take paper notes while interviewing.

 

* * *

 

Beyond confirming the information given by the client there wasn’t much that could be done before meeting her at Malcolm Carter’s flat on Saturday morning.

By the time Evelyn had carried out a basic survey of the company Carter worked for, his boss was already halfway out of the city for the bank holiday weekend, and all of the HR lines were going to answer phone. Her contact at National Missing Persons was at Butlins Skegness Holiday Park and the officer assigned to Carter’s case had gone home early.

Evelyn had forgotten about the bank holiday. Christie would normally have mentioned it on her way out, but for most of Evelyn's cases it wouldn’t have made any difference to the work she could do. There was usually some time sensitivity to her work and since she wasn’t tied to children or a partner with more standard working hours, weekends and evenings just changed the way Christie charged her hours.

Thankfully the bank holiday had also rained off Sara’s weekend plans. Normally her pack spent the last weekend of the month running through the Dartmoor Right to Roam area, but between the traffic and the crowds, her pack leadership had rearranged the meet up to the first weekend in September, allowing Sara to accompany Evelyn to Carter’s flat after their usual Saturday morning run and breakfast. It was nice to have the excuse to invite Sara along. None of Evelyn’s recent cases had needed a freelance computing expert and it had been clear sailing at Reardon and Sons technology-wise after the teething problems of last year’s upgrade so she and Sara hadn’t had much reason to meet up outside their weekly runs.

The area Malcolm Carter lived in was nice but not ridiculously expensive. It looked like most of the houses had been converted in to flats for the rental market, but the gardens were well cared for, and none of the wheelie bins were overflowing or misplaced. The cars parked along the street, narrowing the road to a single lane in the centre, were all mid-range, but none of them more than ten years old. All fitting with Carter’s position in middle management in outsourced public sector work. Elizabeth was waiting at the main front door, fiddling with a set of keys, as they walked down the street from the tube station. Evelyn felt Sara slip from the easy relaxed calm state she’d been in since they met up, to alertness as she heard the jangle of keys from halfway down the street.

Carter’s flat was small and furnished in a mishmash of styles from Ikea and Argos, all well used but not falling apart. It was obvious the police hadn’t taken searching his flat particularly seriously. They entered from the communal hallway directly into an open plan room. At one end of the room was a kitchen nook and boxed off corner for the bathroom and at the other the open door to his bedroom. Carter’s coat rack was full, but the weather had been warm last Thursday, and his shoes were neatly put away, Evelyn noticed on first glance. On a second look, she saw a gap next to a pair of badly battered trainers in a style beloved by runners Nike hadn’t made for at least five years. Next to the shoe rack was Carter’s laptop bag with his wallet still in it.

Elizabeth chattered from the doorway, a meaningless burble that Evelyn tried to answer at the right moments, while getting as much from the flat as possible and paying attention to Sara. From Sara’s tense back and the way she was almost sniffing the air, something was off, but Evelyn couldn’t see what it was.

On the kitchen counter, a notice from Carter’s landlord that there would be an exorcism of the building on Thursday had been haphazardly dumped on top of a pile of circulars and junk mail. The single cupboard dedicated to dry goods was filled with tins of beans, tomatoes, and vegetables in unsalted water, packets of brown rice and pasta and a sugar free muesli, nothing that would spoil any time soon. Cheese, milk, fresh vegetables and a box of leftovers were going off in the fridge. Nothing unexpected for a middle-aged, health conscious single man. The bathroom and bedroom were clean and relatively tidy, again what Evelyn would expect from a conscientious bachelor. Evelyn quickly located his passport and other official documentation in the filing cabinet in the bedroom.

No sign of a struggle. If Carter had been taken somewhere against his will it wasn’t from here. But also, there was no indication that this was someone who had planned to leave for more than a jog round the block. Evelyn stretched, popping out her spine, and rejoined Sara and Elizabeth in the main room.

“Thank you,” Evelyn said. “That was really helpful.”

Elizabeth brightened slightly. “Do you think it will help?”

They walked together back to the tube, with Sara close enough for their hands to brush against each other. It spread a comforting warmth through Evelyn originating where their fingers touched.

The tube was relatively empty, letting them all get seats. Sara’s warmth pressed against Evelyn’s side, not her normal relaxed sprawl into Evelyn’s space but a tense pressure against her. Elizabeth kept up a steady chatter about impersonal and meaningless topics until her stop.

Sara waited for the tube to leave the station before speaking, quietly and close enough that no one else would hear. Her breath brushed against Evelyn’s skin. “Either Malcolm Carter has no scent, or he hasn’t been to that flat for a long time.”

 

* * *

 

People tend to assume that being a private investigator who specialised in supernatural cases would involve a lot of chases and require a decent amount of physical fitness, but it really didn't. Before Evelyn met Sara, her exercise routine was twice round the local park when she couldn’t fit into her favourite jeans. It was her accountancy degree and specialism in examining corporate accounts that made James, the big boss, hire her. And it was poring over Malcolm Carter’s financials that found him.

Carter took his running far more seriously than Evelyn would have thought possible before she met Sara, as his flat had made clear. He was also very organised. In the same filing cabinet Evelyn had found his passport and birth certificate were two years of bank statements, Oyster statements, and receipts for all major purchases, cross referenced to each other. Methodical and very set in his ways; rent took up about half his paycheque, with another quarter split evenly between Tesco and Transport for London, but all his big purchases for the last two years had been at a local specialist running shop.

There was nowhere near Carter’s flat suitable for the kind of running that he was making purchases. But Carter paid for all his travel on his Oystercard, registered his card online and used easily guessed – if you had access to his flat – passwords. It was easy enough for Evelyn to trace his comings and goings. Every weekday morning at 8am he boarded the tube to work. Two days a week he got on the tube after work at 5pm and got off at Charing Cross, where according to his financial records he paid for dinner for two once a week. Three days a week he came straight home and reboarded the tube half an hour later getting off at Theydon Bois. Two hours later he got back on at Snaresbrook. Between those two stations was Epping Forest, with its miles of woodland pathways.

Epping Forest wasn’t their normal patch to run. Sara preferred Wimbledon Common, and Evelyn only really ran for Sara’s company, but Sara had been up for a break from routine. They didn’t know which route Carter took, just the general direction, so Sara shifted when they got into the forest. Evelyn put a well worn collar on her that identified her as Evelyn’s dog, and hooked up an adjustable lead for appearance’s sake.

On the beaten path Sara stuck close, happy doggy smile firmly affixed, not that Evelyn was worried that anyone would notice her distinctively wolf shaped head and ears. Sara’s thick, dark, tightly curled coat wasn’t what Joe Public thought of when he thought werewolf, but she was still an impressive sight in wolf form, tall and lean. Five miles in they dropped off the beaten path. Here there were too many families and people taking shortcuts home through the woods for a serious runner like Carter to have stuck to the main path. Instead they explored the smaller, less well used paths. Every so often Sara would run off to investigate an interesting smell, then return, sticking so close Evelyn could bury her hand in the thick fur at the nape of her neck. Until Sara barked once and sat down.

A short distance off the poorly marked path, hidden behind three trees, were human leg bones and a partially attached foot in a Nike trainer. Evelyn scratched Sara behind the ears, letting her lean her weight against her legs. “Do you want to change back?” she asked. Sara shook her head and thumped her tail into Evelyn’s legs.

Calling the police to report a found body in Epping Forest was an interesting experience, especially as this was Essex Police’s patch and Evelyn had found the body looking for a missing person reported on the Met’s patch. It kept them late enough that they had to cancel their dinner plans.

 

* * *

 

Evelyn was dressed up a lot more than she would normally for work, as Christie had commented on when she arrived. She was meeting Sara at 5:30pm, after her last client of the day: a follow up with Elizabeth Roberts at 5pm. To make up for their cancelled dinner plans, she had booked a table at a Lebanese restaurant that Sara had been talking about, with a dress code, unlike the casual Jamaican of their previous half made plans.

Evelyn had already prepared the billing hours and emailed them to Elizabeth, but she wasn’t expecting this to be an easy sign off. The supernatural was all around, but it never affected most people. They’d have a shifter co-worker who was legally allowed the three full moon days off, or a favourite vampire delivery driver who always had the night shift, but it wasn’t something they thought about or really understood. She expected it was that way for Elizabeth Roberts. Not that Evelyn could complain, as that had been her understanding and interest in the supernatural prior to joining Reardon and Sons.

As Evelyn expected, Elizabeth Roberts was far more composed at this meeting than she had been at either of their previous interactions, but she still walked in trailing a faint air of bewilderment. She listened attentively and signed off on Evelyn’s hours without complaining about the overtime markups Christie had insisted on, or about Sara being listed as an associate. When they had finally agreed the invoice it was 5:20pm, and despite her phone burning a hole in her pocket with Sara’s unanswered text sitting on it, Evelyn asked, “Do you have any other questions?”

“They said he died at least five years ago.” Elizabeth Roberts’s voice broke on the last word. “How can that be? I saw him on Tuesday. I touched him on Tuesday.” With each sentence her voice rose.

“When Malcolm died on his run, his spirit got up and continued living the same life he had been living before he died,” Evelyn explained. “He became a poltergeist. They are a fairly common form of haunting and are normally completely unaware that they aren’t still alive.”

Evelyn heard Sara’s voice as she came in and chatted with their receptionist outside in the lobby. Hopefully this meeting would be over soon. She picked up the informational pamphlets on hauntings, the undead, and poltergeists that she had collected before the meeting. “These might help,” she said, as Elizabeth asked, “So why did he disappear and - ” she broke off as she realised she was talking over Evelyn.

“Go on.” Evelyn used her best distressed client voice and tried not to look at the clock pointing to 5:30pm, or think about Sara waiting on her in the lobby, or the unexpected quivery anxious feeling in her stomach. It was just dinner with Sara. Okay, the restaurant was fancy, and they’d actually planned this in advance as just them, not going with a group of friends or keeping on hanging out until they were hungry then picking an interesting sounding restaurant nearby.

Elizabeth swallowed compulsively and took the bundle of pamphlets turning them over in her hands, “Why, after five years, did he disappear now? And how did you know?”

“He was exorcised when the building his flat was in was cleared following the death of another tenant,” Evelyn answered. “My associate noticed there was no male scent in his flat, which, combined with the age of his major purchases and the letter announcing the exorcism the day before he was reported missing, suggested the possibility.”

Roberts nodded and stood. “Thank you. The police couldn’t give me any explanation as to how you would have known.” She turned and left the room without a backward glance, the air of bewildered shock still clinging to her.

Evelyn started to shut down her computer and shuffled the paper copies back into their folders for Christie to file on Monday. She heard the outside door close, and then the office door reopened to admit Sara. Evelyn felt herself smile automatically at the sight. Like Evelyn, Sara had dressed up, swapping her trademark jeans and a graphic t-shirt ensemble for well fitted grey wool suit trousers and a waistcoat that emphasised her runner’s physique paired with a turquoise raw silk dress shirt that made her skin shimmer like burnished bronze.

“Do you need to take a rain check?” Sara asked.

“No.” Evelyn came round the desk with the file. “Just let me drop this on Christie’s desk and we are good to go.”

A strangely intense look passed over Sara’s face, and the next thing Evelyn knew there were warm hands on her hips, gathering the fullness of her skirt, and plump chapped lips pressed against hers. Evelyn gasped and raised her hands, tangling them in Sara’s tight curls. They were just as soft and thick in human form as they were in wolf form. She was surrounded in Sara, the clean cocoa and coconut scent of her blocking out the smells of the office. She didn’t know how long they stood there kissing, but it felt like something they should have done ages ago. When they finally broke from each other it was with matching ridiculous grins and lingering fingers.


End file.
